1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the recording of dots.
2. Related Art
A technique that, in a case of executing character printing by causing a plurality of recording heads, which discharge ink of different colors, to reciprocate, with respect to a recording material, and executing a main scan during an outward motion and during a return motion, records in a region over which character printing with a single main scan is possible with m×n dot groups set as a unit by executing a main scan a plurality of times using a plurality of thinning patterns, which are arranged in a manner in which the dot groups are not adjacent to one another, and which are in complementary arrangement relationships, is known (JP-A-6-22106).
In the above-mentioned technique, individual dot groups are formed in a rectangular shape. A boundary line of these rectangles is configured by an edge that is parallel to a main scanning direction, and an edge that is parallel to a sub-scanning direction. Accordingly, a long boundary line that extends in the main scanning direction, and a long boundary line that extends in the sub-scanning direction are formed through aggregation of the boundary lines of adjacent dot groups.
A technique that forms dot groups so that boundary lines of dot groups are not parallel to either the main scanning direction or the sub-scanning direction, is known as another technique (JP-A-2015-16671). In this technique, dot groups are classified as dot groups that belong to a first region (hereinafter, referred to as first dot groups) and dot groups that belong to a second region (hereinafter, referred to as second dot groups), and dot groups that belong to each region are formed using separate main scan passes. According to this technique, it is difficult for banding to stand out.
In cases of techniques that use dot groups such as JP-A-6-22106 and JP-A-2015-16671, while it is easier to suppress color spotting (color variation), it is easy for image quality to deteriorate as a result of the influence of cockling of a recording medium. It is easy for the relative positional relationships of the first dot groups and the second dot groups of JP-A-2015-16671 to become shifted at locations in which there is a large amount of cockling. When this shifting occurs, dots overlap, dots are not formed in locations in which they should be formed, and the like. Hereinafter, deteriorations in image quality due to these phenomena will be referred to as boundary spotting.